OK, but could be better. I used to get my monos wrong all the time, and its always the same problem many people suffer...too many midtones..

If you can, the first thing that will add more animation and life would be catch lights. Position your subject so there is some reflection in there eyes - if you can because the sun is too harsh - pop you flash on manual at around 1/16.

Second, to get a nice range of tones, you can help them pop by messing with the level slides in PS. Pres "ctrl" and "L" at the same time. Slide the highlights (furthest right) to the left and then the midtones (middle). This should help bring out the high lights

Cool advice.........will try it out tomorrow.

Question..................can any photo be converted to a good mono...or does it depend on the quality of photo first taken.....


I am asking these questions as since giving up photography I have not really taken much stuff but picked up the camera again recently and and seeing things differently and need to get some other peoples take on stuff.

Not really. You need a good tonal range in the original photograph. With mono look for good contrasty light, tones, and shadows. Over cast weather tends to be rubbish for that.

Thanks for your input.

Be back in the week with another try.

Great imput from DC - basically its just a bit too grey at the moment!

Still a little grey for my tastes and still not enough light to the eyes.
Cute picture though!

How do I make the grey better?

there is an excellent plugin for Adobe called " Silver Exif Pro" (find on google) which is free. This automatically gives a wide variety of B/W tone variations from colour with a single click of the mouse, or make manual adjustments.

I have used it many times and can highly recommend it as a valuable addon to Adobe editing suites

Link
http://silver-efex-pro.software.informer.com/
http://silver-efex-pro.software.info.../1.0/download/

Bazza